


Lotus Eaters

by skinonbones



Series: Dreaming Escape [2]
Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Mentions of Anna and Oksana's fucked-up relationship, Oksana thoughts and memories, Once you fantasize a Villaneve escape one must simply keep going, Soft Villanelle - Freeform, nearly plotless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:55:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24298450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skinonbones/pseuds/skinonbones
Summary: Eight of Swords: The Eight of Swords shows a woman bound and blindfolded. Eight swords surround her, seemingly trapping her in place, a symbol of the limiting thoughts, beliefs and mindset that prevent her from moving forward in her life. However, look closer: if the woman removed her blindfold, she would quickly realise that she can escape her predicament by letting go of her limiting beliefs and establishing a new, more empowered mindset. The water pooled at her feet suggests that her intuition might see what her eyes cannot.Eve and Oksana try to build a life together. Sequel to “Ondine.” (Now let's try to imagine them a *real* happy ending -- a little fluffier than before).
Relationships: Anna Leonova/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova, Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Series: Dreaming Escape [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1754155
Comments: 18
Kudos: 102





	Lotus Eaters

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't going to write a sequel, at first, but then I had to figure out what they would do in Sommarøy, and to try on Oksana's character (especially after 3x01-3x07). Tried to keep the tone and characterization consistent, but (surprise!) there's even less plot in this one. Mostly Oksana, processing.
> 
> (Listen to “Body Fat”—How to Dress Well)
> 
> “I’ll cavern you, and grotto you, and water-fall you, and wood you, and water you, and immense-rock you, and tremendous-sound you, and solitude you.”  
> —John Keats, letter to John Reynolds, 14 March 1818.
> 
> […] For the plain is parched  
> By flax-crop, parched by oats, by poppies, in Lethe slumber-drenched, parched. Nathless by change  
> The travailing earth is lightened, but stint not  
> With refuse rich to soak the thirsty soil,  
> And shower foul ashes o'er the exhausted fields.  
> —Virgil, “Georgics 1”
> 
> I wake and it is summer.  
> You live through your hair color.  
> The first thing I notice is the opened arm.  
> An increasingly clarifying field.  
> A grass in exile.
> 
> But later it becomes Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday.  
> This, that I still move my hands through my hair,  
> that it is still completely bright even though I now squeeze my eyes shut  
> with both eyes at the same time.  
> Nothing is merely biographically simple.  
> It is the sun that is visible in the moon’s light.  
> —Fredrik Nyberg, "LAGURUS (L. masc.)" (my translation from the original Swedish)

Sommarøy, Oksana thought. Summer Island.

Norwegian was not much different from English, or German. Eve had explained the roots of the language, Old English and Old Norse, the influence of High German. Medieval invasions from Denmark and Sweden. The moments where Eve spoke to her, and was speaking to herself. For, of course, they both knew that it was Eve who needed to grasp every line of logic, to put together pieces. But Oksana—Oksana needn’t know the history of the root; all they had to do was take hold. 

A cobbler, Eve said. A what? A language that’s been stitched together, over time—you get how it works when you pull out the guts. _Every language has been stitched together over time,_ Oksana thought. So she listened, and read, and learned, until the tendrils began to grow in her mind. And when she woke from her first dream in Norwegian, alone in bed—the sound of Eve, hacking away in the garden outside the house floating in through the window—she smiled.

_You’ll get sick of me, if we’re together all the time,_ Eve said, a dry grin lurking around the corners of her mouth. Oksana heard: _I’ll get sick of you, over time._

So she had stepped out into the garden, with a glass of water, for Eve — _the garden in Grismet, her mother and a cup of tea_ — and said, _I dreamed about you last night._ Eve’s lips quirked up — she wiped the sweat from her temples, took the glass, drank. Said, _Yeah?_ Oksana thought: _Of course, Eve. Because_ you _are with_ me _. All the time._ What had happened to that? _Neither of us will ever be bored again._ She twisted her lips at the memory, shook it off with a toss of her head.

_Let’s do something today,_ she said. We have another 24 hours of daylight. After all. The benefits of living in the Arctic Circle. All they had was time. Yet Eve bustled around the garden, she bustled around the kitchen, she raged through all the rooms of the house like a “dust-devil” — unfortunate term, something she had picked up on one boring trip to the American south-west — a tiny tornado, mostly dirt. But because they were all grime and wind, they had body — chunks that could hit, scratch, unfortunate little parts you did not want in your eyes or lungs. You did not want to get in the fray. So Oksana — she sat still. Woke up every morning with a new language growing strange new limbs in her mind — alien, but becoming home — with new, strange scratches on her body, blood and skin under her nails. 

_Did you know that all the people in your dreams are actually you?_ she said. Eve cocked her head at that.

_Where did you hear that?_ she asked.

_I had a psychologist,_ she said. _A long time ago. Jerome._ She rolled her eyes. _He was useless. A Freudian._

_Hm,_ Eve said. She looked thoughtful. _That would have to be true, wouldn’t it? Since you’re the one making the dream._

_Ah, it should be so simple,_ Oksana said. An attempt at playfulness. _But Jerome, he thought it was much more complicated than that. When you talk to someone in a dream, you are not talking to your idea of them. You are talking to an idea of yourself, in someone else’s skin._

_So that’s what sex dreams are,_ Eve said. A joke. _All this time, I’ve been fucking myself, not you._

Oksana smiled, indulgent. _Yes, Eve,_ she said, even as a hot thrill sang in her stomach. _It is only a dream, after all._

Something flashed in Eve’s eyes, then; Oksana watched it burst to life, then, just as quickly, shrink back into the ground. She waited for Eve to touch her, then. Eve did not.

_Okay,_ Eve said. _What do you want to do?_

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


They packed bread, cheese, the tiny, sweet shrimp that abounded in the markets of this tiny fishing village. And salmon roe — Oksana relished the _pop_ of them in her mouth, the texture and the savory oil. Eve called it _ikura._ Oksana had raised an eyebrow at that. _It is called that in Russian, too,_ she said. красная икра — krasnaya ikra. _All caviar in Russian is “ikra.”_

Eve smiled at her. _Know any Korean?_

Oksana grimaced. _I am still learning._

_그래_ , Eve said. Her eyes looked satisfied. They said: _Yes. Something that is just mine. 그냥 내꼬야._ But there she was, projecting. Eve did not think in Korean. She did not dream in Korean. Eve had explained her childhood, once, after sex _,_ her American accent with a distinct New England flavor: Korean parents. They spoke only English in front of her, afraid that she would acquire a Korean accent. Worried that she would be discriminated against for it, just as they were. So Eve had not grown up speaking Korean, had an American accent when she did speak it, an American accent that would not leave her mouth in any language. That was what parents did, wasn't it: they gave you a body, and squeezed it into shape before you knew better. They decided little things, like how it is that sounds take form in your mouth. Only sometimes — there was something very slightly RP in the curl of Eve's tongue around the long “e” and the “sh” of “delicious.” Maybe her American-ness was why she was so industrious. Oksana knew little about Americans, cared little for them. Only that they were very annoying tourists, obnoxious, crass, did not enunciate their vowels, had no flair for English even as many of them insisted everyone else speak it. But Eve — she must not have liked it much either. Why else had she not been back in years. Perhaps some day they would go to California. Somewhere warm, Pacific.

Here, in Norway, in the north, as in Russia, fruit ripened slowly, and so the berries were small — smaller than any Oksana had ever seen — but intense, intensely sweet, intensely just what they were. It was like this in Russia, too. Perhaps all cold climates with long winters. She felt a brief flash of annoyance with Carolyn — of course she would find a way to needle at her. Just as well. 

_We are not waiting,_ she said. _We are not in exile._

Eve startled, guiltily, at that. _I know,_ she said. But she did not. To Eve, they were castaways, left to a life of lotus-eating. Waking — gorging themselves on flowers — sleeping. And sleeping. And sleeping. On an island where the sun had yet to set, in the two weeks since they had arrived; an island where the popular opinion was that they, those who lived there, were simply above time's metric. Well? This was not Oksana’s life. One does not really “sleep together” — always, in sleep, you are alone. One does not _share_ a dream. One dreams alone. And what was the point of all of this, this bare existence, if one allows oneself to mistake their situation for leaping from one trap into another. Eve — always one to invent a new set of restrictions. Beautiful Eve, strong Eve — perhaps she needed this bondage to keep her mind, her wild impulses in check. She looked at her sometimes with pitying eyes but — no, Oksana had not been to college. She had not lived a “stable,” bourgeois life. She had been a peasant, then an orphan, then a prisoner, then an assassin; she had been poor, and rich beyond Eve’s comfort, perhaps comprehension. Now she was free, and she did not need permission to accept all that it meant, all the boundless opportunity. Perhaps this was what it meant for the middle class, to be “normal,” she thought—one builds a picket fence in one’s mind, and treats it like a prison wall. One finds oneself on an island and the ocean becomes a new border, when one could just as easily swim or build a boat. Making a nutshell of infinite space.

One of the first things Eve had brought into their new house was a set of books. Shakespeare, if you could believe it.

_I’m going back to school,_ Eve joked. She had yet to touch a single one. So Oksana read them. “Laying low,” as they said.

GUILDENSTERN. Prison, my lord? 

HAMLET. Denmark’s a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ. Then is the world one.

HAMLET. A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ th’ worst.

ROSENCRATZ. We think not so, my lord. 

HAMLET. Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.

ROSENCRANTZ. Why then, your ambition makes it one. 'Tis too narrow for your mind.

HAMLET. O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

She thought about showing this passage to Eve, how apt, how _Eve_ of Shakespeare to write this — and thought better of it. She would not think it was funny. It was funny, to Oksana, because it was not true. A prison is a prison. When would Eve understand? _Which way I fly am hell, myself am hell_ , Oksana thought. _Paradise Lost_. One of Anna’s only “favorites” in English. _Oksana,_ she would say, _your name means “praise to God.”_ It means “beautiful,” she would think. It means “stranger.” What else is a child if not those things. To her father: beautiful. To her mother: stranger. It was, she thought in Eve’s voice, a clever compromise. But in Anna’s house, she sat, when Anna would not fuck, and read psalms as she was asked to; the praise psalms Anna had marked out for her, in English and French. “O taste and see that the Lord is good.”

_Did you like it?_ Anna had asked. A question with a right and a wrong answer.

_Of course,_ Oksana said. 

And Anna had explained that it was a psalm of David, when he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, so that the king did not recognize the threat of him, let him escape. It had its irony, at the time. In hindsight, at least. Now that the memory was Eve’s — she ached. Eve and V — sounds that were mirror-images. Eve and Oksana — it was all too Biblical, wasn’t it? She shook to get closer to it: moth to flame. What does one do with all this wanting?

_Eve,_ she said. _Let’s go._

And they walked, hand in hand, along the coast of Sommarøy, clockless Sommarøy. Endless light of summer. Endless night of winter. _What are we going to do with all this time?_ she heard, Eve’s voice that night, their first night together. Eve’s constant question, even if she did not know it. _If we get it._

_Black milk of daybreak, we drink you at night. Eve,_ she said. _What is this in Swedish?_

_God, I don’t know._ Eve laughed.

_Gryningens svarta mjölk vi dricker dig på natten,_ she said. _Vi dricker till middag och morgon, vi dricker på kvällen vi dricker och dricker._

_Show-off,_ Eve said, good-naturedly. 

_I thought you would like it,_ Oksana said. _It suits you._

_It suits you,_ Eve retorted.

_Why not the both of us?_ Oksana shot back.

And then Eve was quiet, rubbing circles with her thumb on the back of Oksana’s hand. She looked out over the coast. Boats, brilliant blue water, tiny flares of color in the wildflowers that dared to shoot up, while they had the chance. There were roots running, deep in the ground, below their feet. Oksana wondered — _does Eve know that we are like them?_

_Where did you learn all of this stuff?_ Eve asked, instead. Meaning, Oksana assumed, _When did you have time?_

_I have a good memory,_ she said, tapping her temple with a smile. And then she mimicked Eve’s voice, just to tease her: _Oh_ — _Oksana_ —

Eve flushed a bright red, shoved her a little. _Hey!_ she said. Then her face turned thoughtful. Here we go, Oksana thought. 

_What did your psychologist say about you?_ she asked. 

_Nothing interesting_ , Oksana said. Or did he? She might not have been listening. _Normal stuff. ‘You are perfect killing machine’; ‘okay, Konstantin, she is fine’_ — she waved her hand — _you know. Things like that._

_‘Normal' — right,_ Eve said. _Sounds like it. Oksana, have you heard of hyperlexia? Or something like it._

Oksana did not reply, preferring to pop a blueberry in her mouth. To feel it burst between her teeth. Sweet, tart, intense.

_Actually, never mind,_ Eve said. _Who cares._

Indeed. And, of course, Oksana understood. It wasn’t as if she weren’t also _bored,_ as if her nerves were not also accustomed to a faster pace, as if she wouldn’t prefer to have other things to do than sit still and _process._ There was nothing to do here besides _remember_ . And memory was nothing like dreaming. Jerome’s annoying voice echoing in her mind, _All dreams are based on memory. And nothing in the memory is ever lost. That is why we meet regularly, yes?_ He folded his hands in his lap. _It begins to build up. When you add a new brick to a building, it is a different building._

So Oksana had rolled her eyes, and spent the rest of the session pretending to have spontaneously forgotten English. Jerome was very stupid. It was like with all of the very expensive education he claimed to have had, Oksana would have her doubts if she cared enough to think on it, he had never heard of the paradox of the ship.

_I am getting old,_ Anna said. Oksana had kissed the round of her shoulder then, her hair freshly dyed, a chestnut brown. It glowed in the light — but not like Anna’s, she thought. _This body is not mine, anymore._

_Of course it is,_ Oksana said. _It is yours, and you are beautiful._

Anna had scoffed, even as she flushed with pleasure. Oksana had loved to watch it — the ease with which she lied to herself. _Have you heard of Theseus, Oksana?_

_Tell me,_ she said. 

_It is a puzzle,_ Anna said. _Theseus was a Greek hero. The founder of Athens. He went on a journey, on a ship_ — _a very long journey. And over time, each and every part of it rotted away, and was replaced with new parts. By the time he returned to Athens, every part had been replaced. If all of the parts were different_ — she paused, watching Oksana, savoring the question — _is it the same ship?_

And Oksana had said, _It is a puzzle that does not need to be solved._ A hack at the Gordian knot. _What do the parts matter to the whole? What does the whole matter to the parts?_

Anna had sighed, then, and brushed Oksana’s hair back. _I am saying,_ she said. _None of this body is what I was born with. All of the cells are different. And in some years, none of_ this _body,_ she said, tugging Oksana’s ear, _will be the body I have touched._

And Oksana had scowled at that. Convenient of her, she thought dimly, at the present time. _Then you are wrong,_ she said.

She wasn’t. And she was. _Swim, or build a boat,_ she thought, looking at Eve. _But do not think you have lost anything, when you come to me._

_Did I ruin the moment?_ Eve asked, wryly, a hint of real worry in her eyes, rousing Oksana from her thoughts.

_No,_ she said. _Never._ What was a moment without its parts. The parts were them. Time was nothing, Oksana thought, it belonged only to the two of them. Together.

_Come on,_ she said, smiling. _I will show you something._

*

  
  
  


So there they were, eating lunch on a cliff overlooking the water. Not a fisherman or a nosy neighbor in sight. A “secret” spot Oksana had found on one of her long walks, when it was clear just at a glance that Eve needed space. 

“Is this what you wanted to show me?” Eve asked. She smiled and swept back her long, beautiful hair. It was grayer at the temples, now, much longer than when they had first met. Wild. Oksana felt the familiar, forlorn call, inside of her — an old friend. _She said that I was your type,_ Eve had once said to her; a small cruelty Oksana had felt like a needle in her heart. A type. To reduce her own knowledge of Oksana to something a former lover — one who had betrayed her, who hadn’t known her at all, who took and took — had said. (She _had_ been a child, Oksana realized now, she _had_ been seduced, and maybe it wasn’t so bad, so powerless, to see it for what it was; the knowledge was hers now). So Oksana had looked levelly back at her, held her temper — it was getting easier and easier, as she practiced — and said, _She did not know anything. And now she’s dead. Eve, please. Do not be cruel. Do not say things just to hurt me._ And Eve apologized, immediately, eyes dewy — and it was real. Not Anna’s fake tears, manipulation without the finesse and purpose Oksana later learned. A weapon is more dangerous when you do not know exactly what you wield it for. This exchange was what Eve called “communication.” A tool in her relationship-toolbox. 

“It is part of it,” Oksana replied. “Isn’t it amazing? It is just us.” She smiled — Eve, do you like it? Wasn’t it clever? “That is the other part. Just us.”

And Eve laughed, then, full and warm. And cupped her palms around Oksana’s face, caressed the strands of hair at her temples.

“I love it,” she said. “Thank you. That’s very clever.”

Communication, again. Oksana loved to preen, and now, Eve loved to watch her preen. But there were still many things they did not talk about. So she held Eve’s hands, against her face, for a moment, before pulling them away, pushing her own hands into Eve’s hair, sweeping it aside, brushing her lips against the nape of Eve’s neck. Eve sighed. Pleasure, Oksana noted, satisfied. A good sigh. She smiled against Eve’s skin, whispered, “Just us.”

And she opened her mouth, sucked on the skin of Eve’s neck, at the ridge of vertebrae; Eve shuddered, reached for Oksana’s hair. Moaned, at the sensation of her lips, her breath, trailing down the length of her spine, when Oksana slipped the loose linen shirt off her shoulders, leaving Eve in her jeans, chest bare, covered only by the press of it to her thighs and knees. Oksana imagined the feeling bounding from nerve to nerve; her hands tightened, instinctively, on the skin on Eve’s stomach, the ridge of Eve’s hip through denim. This was something Oksana had discovered early on—Eve was one of the only women Oksana knew whose back was such an intense erogenous zone. Was this why she had been so tense, all that time ago, when Oksana had unzipped her dress in the kitchen? Had she been hiding this?

_A friend of mine once joked that BDSM was for people who were trying to get creative about_ not _having sex with their partners_ , Eve said.

_That is ridiculous,_ Oksana said. _Sex is sex._ Except for when it’s not. But she wondered, idly, if the sex between the two of them was not what Eve had been expecting. Thought back to the night she had watched her boring husband wrap his boring hands around her throat. Well? Oksana did not want to choke the life out of Eve — at least the desire had not emerged yet — not when it still shook her to the bone how much she _felt_ with just her mouth on Eve’s body, the give of her flesh; all the particularities of what gave her pleasure. She wanted to _feel_ what Eve felt. She imagined that she did. _You’re a romantic,_ Eve had said, playfully. _Come here,_ Oksana had replied, burning, burning while she looked at Eve’s long, black hair brushing over her chest, grazing her nipples. Eve had mentioned wanting to cut it— _It’s too heavy,_ she had said. _And it tugs on my scalp when I put it up. Constant headache._ And Oksana had gathered it in her hands, lifted gently, savoring the soft, warm weight of it. It _was_ heavy. The color trapped in the heat of the sun as if it were Eve’s own; Oksana thought, nonsensically, _It is the sun that is visible in the moon’s light._ She said, _Then I will hold it for you. Is it heavy now?_ And Eve had laughed. _No, but you’ll never get to let go._ Good.

“Here?” Eve gasped. “Is this the surprise? Jesus.”

Oksana laughed, breathlessly, mouth still pressed against the ridge of spine between Eve’s shoulder blades. Eve shivered again at the touch, arched her back. Oksana pressed another kiss there, and cupped her breasts.

“It is the surprise if you are surprised,” she said. “Are you, Eve?”

And Eve didn’t say anything—just turned and caught Oksana’s lips with her own, the soft, warm press of her mouth. The hardness of teeth that belied it. Eve’s skin, her slender frame, the birches, the grass and wildflowers against her back as Oksana held her wrists against the soft, dark earth, carved a path with her mouth down Eve’s chest, down the center of Eve’s belly. The sound of birds, air, waves, Eve’s voice softly calling her, encouraging her: “Oh — Oksana —”

_There is no chance. There are no parts_ , Eve had said.

“ _Elsker deg_ ,” Oksana said, against Eve’s stomach. The soft flesh below her navel. “Do you know what that means?”

Eve went quiet then. And for a second Oksana couldn’t breathe. Then her hand broke Oksana’s grip — stroked into her hair.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m not that hopeless with languages.”

Oksana didn’t laugh. Could not imagine trying, with the sound of her own blood, her own nerves, in her ears — _two sounds. One high and one low._

“I do love you,” Eve said. “Of course I do. Oksana.”

She let out a breath, then. The muscles in Eve’s stomach clenched, at the feeling of it. She stroked them, with her fingertips, then, soothingly, marveling at the sensation.

“Good,” she said. “Good.”

And then she tugged off Eve’s jeans, took her time exploring the inner contours of each of Eve’s legs, closed her eyes and felt _— what_? _everything_ — when Eve came with Oksana’s tongue inside of her, a hand pressing on her lower stomach, the other on her clit. No one else in sight. Just the two of them.

  
  
  


*

  
  
  


They stayed until lunch was long gone, and they were hungry again.

_This is how you know that you are still yours,_ Oksana thought, vaguely. _Through desire. Through need._ This was how Oksana knew that the body Eve knew as hers would carry, through time — desire. Need. Her father: _First, one learns hunger._

_Nothing in the memory is ever lost,_ Oksana thought. _But sometimes it loses ground, on which to root._

“Where did you come from?” Eve said. A question that had not been raised since the beginning; since their first dinner. Maybe not a question, but a statement of wonder. “Who could have brought this into being?”

Oksana felt the familiar impulse — dodge, deflect. Defend.

“Гризмет,” Oksana said. “A village. In Russia.”

Eve hummed. “Were you born there?”

Oksana shrugged.

“I have two brothers,” she said. “One a little younger. One from a different father, a lot younger. He likes Elton John. He will probably realize soon that he is gay, if he has not yet.” 

Eve chuckled.

“Liking Elton John doesn’t make you gay,” she said.

Oksana looked at her.

“He owns a feather boa and star-shaped glasses,” she said. “And he is, like, tiny. So young.”

“Your mother must have been young when she had you, then,” Eve said. “If she had a child recently.”

Oksana shrugged, again.

“She was not young when I killed her,” she said. Was her tone sharp? She did not want Eve to know. But here they were, being honest. Her mind wandered down the path Eve had illuminated: if Borka was — what, nine? — when Oksana was twenty-seven, she was eighteen years older than him. Her mother had probably been younger than Oksana was now, when she gave birth to her.

Eve’s thumb stroked little circles on the back of her hand.

  
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked. “Or is this better left for later.” _Later,_ Oksana thought. _Later, some night, in bed. At home, together. When they were not so fresh from something new, something raw and delicate. What were they going to do, with all this time, after all?_

“I will tell you everything,” she said. “But not when I am hungry.”

Eve let out a little huff; there was a hint of a laugh in it. They were at the edge of the ocean. A beach with white sand. The water would be cool, but in the shallows, still held by the sun.

“Up for a swim?” she said. “Before we feed you.” 

Oksana looked at Eve, smiled. 

_“Vad tror dig att jag lever för?”_ she said.

Eve blinked. “What?”

So it was Swedish, not Norwegian. A little cheat. _Every language is stitched together over time._ She winked back, and jumped into the water.

It is the sun that is visible in the moon's light.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think, and if you want to chat, I'm on Twitter @choking0hazard.
> 
> The Korean:  
> 그래 -- loosely, "okay," or "so that's that"  
> 그냥 내꼬야 -- also loosely, "it's just mine"
> 
> The Swedish:  
> Gryningens svarta mjölk vi dricker dig på natten vi dricker till middag och morgon, vi dricker på kvällen vi dricker och dricker -- Black milk of morning we drink you at night/ we drink you at midday and morning we drink at evening/ we drink and drink  
> (A translation to English of a Swedish translation of Paul Celan's "Todesfuge," originally in German)
> 
> Vad tror dig att jag lever för? -- What do you think I live for?
> 
> Reference to June Jordan's poem "Poem Number Two on Bell’s Theorem, or The New Physicality of Long Distance Love" at some point: "There is no chance we will fall apart.  
> There is no chance.  
> There are no parts." 
> 
> I only wrote in languages I know, thought it would be fun! If I could swing Russian dialogue, I would have. Speculations on Eve's background based on my own experience, and also the fact that Eve's Korean is canonically pretty bad/similar to mine -- she has good listening comprehension, very American pronunciation and limited speaking ability. I wanted this to be romantic, but practical -- drawing on my own experience, and perhaps it hasn't served me well.


End file.
